Leaks be damned, this is not Nokia 8

Even as Nokia (or rather HMD Global) is gearing up for its much-anticipated MWC keynote – scheduled for February 26 – there has been a lot of chit-chatter around the possibilities in tow. Nokia may launch a flurry of Android smartphones, and also give the world the first (full frontal) glimpse of the recently launched Nokia 6 on the said date. Although the company hasn’t revealed any of its cards, for now, there are rumours of at least two Android-based Nokia phones in the fray. One is said to be the budget Nokia E1 while the other is the alleged flagship Nokia P1.

A YouTube channel, that goes by the name Total Tech tried to spoil the party for Nokia a couple of days ago by ‘leaking’ a reference phone that was ‘allegedly’ referred to as the Nokia 8. The phone in question was said to be Nokia’s next flagship (ideally the P1 but it wasn’t explicitly mentioned by the channel) that was apparently used by Qualcomm as a reference handset to show off its new Snapdragon 835 processor.

“Now full disclosure they didn’t know I was filming this phone, and full disclosure they asked people that actually got to see it not to do so. But, I am me sorry,” the video description read. Moreover, the description talks about an anonymous staff member (probably from Qualcomm) that “clearly stated it (the Nokia 8) was reference hardware manufactured for Qualcomm by Nokia.”

Furthermore, the video also went on to mention hardware specs of the alleged Nokia 8: a 5.7-inch Quad-HD Super AMOLED display, A Snapdragon 835 CPU with 6GB RAM, 64GB/128GB memory with expandable storage, a 24-megapixel OIS and Super EIS enabled rear camera and dual front-facing speakers. The phone was also said to have a lesser variant with Snapdragon 821 and 4GB of RAM inside.

While everything looks cool on paper, Qualcomm just came up and rubbished all claims of the Nokia 8’s existence. Or at least, the phone (s) shown off in the video posted by the YouTube channel are not the Nokia 8.

“We do not disclose details of our reference design. We’ve seen a few stories rumoring what we demonstrated in our CES booth to be a Nokia device, those reports are not accurate, our 835 demos were on our own reference design devices which we use to demo our Snapdragon SOC’s every year,” she said.

While we do not know for sure (yet) whether there is a Nokia 8 at all, in the first place, there is also no valid argument (yet) that Nokia may not have a flagship phone up its sleeve somewhere. Things will get clearer on February 26. But, for now, the Nokia 8 (and the Nokia P1) remains all but a mystery.